Since 1887, the Penn Museum has been one of the leading archaeology and anthropology museums in the world, and has sponsored research in every corner of the globe. The Museum was established in 1887 with a groundbreaking act of archaeological field research—the first American expedition to ancient Babylonia to excavate the site of Nippur (then within the Ottoman Empire, now in modern-day Iraq). Since then, the Museum has undertaken over 300 research projects throughout the world.